How Does the Stuffer Open the Paper?

 
My third work day at the newspaper. Today, I'll show you how the stuffing machine gets the first paper, the one everything else goes into, open. It's really simple!

Here is the shopping section loaded at the beginning of the machine, right at the bottom of the picture. Single copies will be pulled off the bottom and into the angled tray that you see going up the left side of the machine, along the entire picture. The papers travel along that tray, but first we have to get them opened.


The outer paper is never folded in half. The fold is offset just a little bit so there is half to three-quarters of an inch overlap. If you don't believe me, go check your own shopping section.

Here is a copy of the paper in the tray. The fold is down- to the bottom left of the picture. The uneven open edge is up.



Here's a closeup:



Ignore the tube coming off where the brass fittings are. Look beneath that and you can see how the top corner of the paper is being lifted up on a metal ramp. But, since the top flap is longer than the bottom one, only the top one is lifted. As the paper moves, the top flap continues up on a separate level so that the paper is now opened up by about six inches.

Look back at the top picture and you can see some stacks of inserts farther down the line that will be fed in as the paper moves.

I'm the bottom of the totem pole. I get that. So, no matter what I do someone is always telling me I should be doing it differently. I think I'm beginning to sort out which people want things done in which ways, so that's helpful.

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